WELCOME TO THE HEART BEAT BOOKS NEWSLETTER
Greetings Gullivar Jones fans! You recently downloaded my latest read from BookFunnel, GULLIVAR JONES AND THE TREASURE OF THE TSAR.
I hope you enjoy it, and encourage you to send me your thoughts about it, good, bad -- or ugly. Only a very few ARC readers have read the story, and I'd love to hear what you think.
Though not every week, I try to send this newsletter on Sunday, a good day to catch up on reading and rest.
I was drawn to Gullivar for two reasons: 1) fantasy, action, and sci-fi fans have wanted another Gullivar Jones novel. He's a public domain hero in demand.
I read Edwin Lester Arnold’s pioneering 1905 pulp novel, Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, and though the writing was clunky, I really
liked Gullivar (whose name is a take off on Lemuel Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's classic).
Gullivar Jones is a nice guy. Oh, he can be tough and swashbuckling when situations demand. But at heart, he's a gentleman, and a perfect foil/partner for Abby Bradshaw and Archie Smart, the two British agents he teams up with in Treasure of the Tsar.
The second reason, and this is the fun one: the name Jones.
I wondered ... what if?
What if Gullivar Jones happened to be the long lost uncle of a certain other legendary explorer?
And what if a couple of high school students working on a family tree project made this discovery through an online DNA test?
And what if Gullivar Jones found Noah's Ark while that other Jones family member found -- well, you know. Every great action story needs parody and satire, for comic relief and recognition of those who came before.
In this new adventure set around 1935, now-retired US Naval Captain Gullivar Jones -- in his early fifties -- races to find the Fountain of Youth.
The only link to the Fountain’s location is a 1914 expedition shrouded in such secrecy, Jones and his British spy partners must travel the globe seeking obscure clues.
The expedition’s leader, Tsar Nicholas II, needed the water to cure his hemophiliac son Alexei, while assuring the malevolent mystic Rasputin never learned of its powerful secrets.
The villains -- and there are plenty -- include real-life Nazi doctors, a fictional Soviet double agent and her hulking, one-eyed henchman, and a Jones family friend turned sinister Dr. Moreau type, blinded by visions of immortality.
The story begins in the present day, after that online DNA test ..
